Some stuff was set up by the government, which was a narrative for the trip, but we also got out on our own and explored on our own. We spent a day in Mariel, about an hour west of Havana, where the Mariel boatlift was in 1980. The numbers are stunning: more than 100,000 Cubans leaving on boats from there. Today, they're expanding a deep-water port that the government is hoping will be helpful to the economy. There are a lot of questions about whether they are really committed or not to foreign investment, how many restrictions there might be.

We took a mini road trip to the island of Varadero, which is one of the tourist beaches in Cuba that brings in Europeans and visitors from Latin and South America. We tried to follow how tourism money comes into the country and what it means to people. From there, we went down to the town of Cárdenas, which is visually one of the most awesome places I've been to, with horse carts clomping through these old colonial streets. We kept driving into sugar country—real, classic, old Cuba—where the sugar industry thrived until the '90s when a lot of people thought Fidel Castro made some bad decisions. We spent a very memorable hour with a family there. The father worked three decades in the sugar industry and showed us his ration booklet, which is still something that exists in Cuba.

When we got back to Havana, we did a couple interviews with dissidents, which we purposefully saved for the end of the trip. The last interview we did was with a journalist who was beaten up on the street about 10 days prior, and he talked about the challenge of trying to test the limits of free expression in a country that doesn't allow much of it. It was really interesting when he mentioned that he gets trained at the U.S. Interests Section in Havana, which is another sign that the U.S. government is still trying to do the best it can to break through and do democracy promotion in Cuba, as we saw with the "Cuban Twitter" story earlier this year.

Were there difficulties in reporting from the country?

I wanted to be really humble and realistic about it and say that none of us were Cuba experts. We were going to take in a place and bring it home as best we could. It's an incredibly murky and complicated place—and we're very new to it, so we had open minds and tried to be listeners.

What surprised you about being a journalist in Cuba?

I thought we'd be followed more and tracked more. Our first stop was the International Press Center, and I expected a five-hour lecture about how great Cuba is. It was literally 20 minutes: We filled out a form, they handed us press credentials, and off we go. We were much more free to wander than I expected to be. There was a surprising moment in the other direction, though, in Varadero, when we wanted to talk to people about their jobs in tourism. We got to the hotel where we arranged interviews with a band and a server, and all of a sudden it got really tense and people got nervous and scared when the security people at the hotel found out. And that was a window into how the fear is still there. There were these little reminders of, "Okay, we're Cuba."

Why go to Cuba now?

Any time you can go is worthwhile because it's such a difficult place to get a look at. We have a colleague in journalism, Nick Miroff at the Washington Post, who did great work telling one story after another there. But to be able to go for a week and get a deep dive—to get the government to allow a team as big as ours was to go in!—is pretty rare. To me, whenever you can get there, you just go.

I do think this is a really interesting time, though. If you look at public opinion in the Cuban American community in Miami, it is changing. There are questions about whether the softening of the position of some younger Cuban Americans means that there will be less pressure over time on this president and future presidents to keep the embargo in place. That's a question worth asking. Now, older Cuban Americans vote much more loyally and much more often and are a very powerful force, so it's not like we're on the cusp of political change. But we're beginning to reach a point where there could be a different policy.

There's a poll out that shows that, for the first time, the majority of Cuban Americans is in favor of ending the embargo. That can be a little misleading because older Cuban Americans vote in much larger numbers but that is a huge development. I think the question that you'll see both parties asking is "Is the old political narrative true?" Do we have to pay this much attention to the Cuban American vote in Florida and is Florida that important in a presidential election. Maybe the answer is yes! But those are the questions sitting there for 2016.

With Mariel Port and Castro pushing tourism development, it really seems that a lot of what he's doing in terms of the economy is pointing to the day when the embargo might be gone. For Varadero and the expansion of that beach resort to succeed, they're going to need a few million American tourists to come every year and that's not going to happen until the embargo is gone. And at Mariel too, that port might see some success in the short term, but it could really be important—especially with the Panama Canal expansion—if that American market opens up.

What was it like to stay at the Hotel Nacional, one of the city's most famous hotels?

It was beautiful. Stunning. It's right on the Malecón which is the long four-mile promenade they call the world's longest bar—especially when the sun goes down—where you'll see massive crowds of Cubans sitting along the water, smoking, drinking, kissing, chatting. It's a great place to meet people!

What should first-time visitors make sure they do while visiting?

It is worth getting out of Havana and Varadero. Being in an old sugar town called Madruga, I felt like I was seeing a different side of Cuba—and one that you can't really miss if you want to understand the place. And I would say don't be nervous and don't be afraid of the place. Have a cultural awareness about the desperation that's there but be open to conversation with these wonderful people who have really interesting stories to tell.